On May 6, Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) decided by a seven
to four vote to annul and repeat Istanbul’s municipal election. The
original election, on March 31, saw Ekrem Imamo?lu from the main
opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), win the mayorship
by a margin of 13,729 votes.

The re-do election will be held on June 23. The YSK’s decision was
substantiated by the claim that some ballot box officials were not civil
servants. Considering all the irregularities that take place every
election in Turkey (none of which have been annulled), this is a
laughable rationale. Moreover, Istanbul voters simultaneously cast votes
in three other elections: for district, city council, and mukhtar
elections. These votes were collected in the exact same envelopes, and
cast in the exact same ballot boxes, as the mayoral votes. Yet those
three other elections were not annulled. Finally, previous elections
also had ballot box officials who weren’t civil servants.

Why then was only the mayoral election annulled and not the other
ones? The YSK’s decision, in short, has no “technical” or “juridical”
justification. It should be named for what it is: a civil coup attempt
by President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an and his allies.

In our earlier analysis
of the local elections, we drew attention to the fact that the results —
particularly in Istanbul — were still contested. The elections saw the
ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its People’s Alliance
lose control over most major cities, including Istanbul, Ankara, Adana,
Mersin, and Antalya. But particularly in Istanbul, the regime has
refused to concede and is attempting to reverse the results. What is at
stake is not just who gets to be the mayor of Istanbul. The future of
the current regime, consisting of the official AKP–Nationalist Movement
Party (MHP) alliance and others, is at stake. So is the future of Turkey
itself.

The decision made by the YSK will probably lead the regime even
deeper into crisis. The decision was made in an atmosphere already
riddled with multiple crises, the most acute being the economic one.
The official data, while unreliable, nonetheless shows the scale of
desperation: the unemployment rate reached 14.7 percent in January, with
youth unemployment over 26 percent. Depreciation of the lira has
accelerated once again, and signs of recovery have failed to appear in
manufacturing and other crucial industries.

There is also an ongoing struggle over the positioning of Turkey
within the world system. Turkey’s decision to buy a stock of the Russian
S-400 missile systems has, once again, severely strained its
relationship with the US and NATO. This led to Mike Pence threatening
that Turkey must choose between NATO and Russia. On top of it,
Iran-style sanctions, from which Turkey has so far been exempted, now
seem imminent.

The Kurdish crisis looms behind the others. On May 2, lawyers were
granted permission to visit the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan. It was the first time in eight
years he was afforded such a visit.

Öcalan and three other inmates issued a short written declaration,
which was read out by his lawyers at a press conference on May 6 — by
chance, only hours before the Istanbul election was annulled. Some
interpreted Öcalan’s statement as a call for the Kurdish movement to
return to negotiations with the government. The coincidence of the close
timing between Öcalan’s declaration on the one hand, and the election
annulment on the other, inspired widespread rumors. Many theorized that
the PKK had made a deal with Erdo?an to partially withdraw Kurdish
support for the opposition, allowing the regime’s candidate to retake
Istanbul.

However, nothing of the sort was signaled in Öcalan’s message. In any
case, peace between Kurdish forces and the ruling AKP seems impossible.
Despite Öcalan’s request that PKK detainees end their hunger strike for
his release, the inmates declared they would continue. For its part,
the leftist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) stated that their position had not changed since March 31, and called for a “common struggle against fascism.”

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on Wednesday, May 15th, 2019 at 00:03 and is filed under Uncategorized.
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